Eagle Scout uncovers WW II veteran’s story

She sent him letters. The last few came back, returned with a message written in red: “Missing in Action.”

“I didn’t know what to think it was horrendous,” Dorothy Sweet, now 86, said.

U.S. Air Force Sgt. Daniel Mahoney Jr., 23, was dead. Now, 66 years after his plane was bombed in Yugoslavia, Mahoney finally will receive the hometown recognition that somehow slipped through the cracks all these years: A sign on a local intersection named in his memory.

Kate Sullivan Foley

He gave her a hope chest and a promise ring, then went off to war.

She sent him letters. The last few came back, returned with a message written in red: “Missing in Action.”

“I didn’t know what to think it was horrendous,” Dorothy Sweet, now 86, said.

U.S. Air Force Sgt. Daniel Mahoney Jr., 23, was dead. Now, 66 years after his plane was bombed in Yugoslavia, Mahoney finally will receive the hometown recognition that somehow slipped through the cracks all these years: A sign on a local intersection named in his memory.

And those who loved and remember him have an Eagle Scout to thank.

“I know that he will have a sign and always be remembered as one of Stoughton’s heroic dead,” Sweet said.

Mahoney’s story resurfaced through the work of Daniel Noyes, 18, who spent more than 250 hours building and placing garden boxes at the bases of 70 veterans’ memorial signs throughout town.

Sweet had heard about the ongoing project and sent him a letter, a donation and a special request that he check on Mahoney Avenue, the street that the selectmen decades ago had named for her beloved.

Noyes assigned a team, led by his father, Greg, to find the street and build a garden box.

When the group came upon the residential road off of Powell Street, Greg called his son to tell him there was no veterans’ dedication sign. There was only a small American flag.

And that did not sit right with the young man.

“I feel that all veterans who sacrificed themselves for our freedom are entitled to some type of dedication,” Noyes said.

With his father’s help and support from Sweet and Mahoney’s sister, Edna Lyons, Noyes filled out a Memorial Square Dedication application and sent it to Michael Pazyra, Stoughton’s veterans agent.

Pazyra said he will review the application and work with the family to ensure a dedication.

He also praised Noyes for choosing to pay tribute to Stoughton’s many Veterans through his Eagle Scout project.

“It is good timing to remind people of the losses our country has suffered and is still suffering today,” Pazyra said.

A lifelong Stoughton resident, Lyons, 93, said she is grateful to Noyes for his efforts on behalf of her brother and other veterans.

Through all the years, she said, the pain of the loss of her only brother has not subsided.

“I am still in mourning,” she said.

“We waited a whole year praying every day that he would be found.”

Sweet, who remained close to the Mahoney family, was devastated. She never married and has kept an album of correspondence from Mahoney, newspaper clippings and other memorabilia from their time together.

Mahoney, who had given Sweet a hope chest and a promise ring, left his Canton Street childhood home to serve his country on November 20, 1942. He was stationed in Florida, Mississippi, Texas, Utah, Arizona and Kansas before being shipped overseas in November 1943.

He was officially declared dead Jan. 15, 1945, a year and a day after he was reported missing.

Mahoney’s remains were found on a mountainside in Yugoslavia in 1949 near the tail of the plane, which had been ripped apart by the bomb. His remains were brought back to Stoughton and a funeral Mass was held for him at Immaculate Conception Church.

Sweet said a friend of the family’s went to selectmen 60 years ago and asked to have a street named for Mahoney. Selectmen obliged, but there was never a formal dedication ceremony, she said.

For years, Sweet kept a memorial at the street sign, but has been unable to continue it in recent years. She told a friend that she was disappointed that Mahoney Avenue did not have a flag. The friend, a nurse, shimmied up the pole and secured the flag seen there today to the sign with surgical tape.

Sweet praised Noyes for all his work and said she wants Mahoney Avenue officially dedicated, so people will know why it bears its name.